On Self-Publishing: Doing the Backstage Work – Self-Publicity in Social Media

I’ve said it before, I suck at sales. Or more to the point, I suck at it if I’m to sell something I don’t have much interest in. Furniture? A new car? Real estate? Monster truck rallies? Yeah, they’re fine and all, but if I’m not truly excited about them, I doubt I could talk you into into them. On the other hand, I will shamlessly foist upon you the latest album I think is absolutely brilliant [This week: Tamaryn’s Cranekiss is pretty high up there], or a book I’d recently read and want everyone else to read as well [Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, which totally did deserve that Hugo].

But what about my own work? Well, I’ll be honest, this is the first time I’m doing this at a professional level. I’ve proudly shown off artwork and photography on my Tumblr and elsewhere, but my writing? Totally new to me. I don’t even have a solid and mapped-out ‘business model’ — in fact, I twitch whenever I hear business-speak like that. Like my writing, I’m definitely a pantser. I go with what works for me.

And lately, that’s taken all kinds of odd and unexpected avenues. I’ll see other writers taking steps in social media and elsewhere, and I’ll think about whether it would work for me. More to the point, I think of it this way: if this particular kind of self-promotion got me to take a look at the product, even if for just a few moments, then maybe it’s a style I could try out myself.

Promoting yourself using social media is tricky, because there’s an extremely thin line between promoting yourself and just spamming your friends’ feeds. You don’t want to oversaturate yourself; the more annoyingly prevalent the advertisement, the more people are just going to skim over it, or worse, muting or unfollowing you.

Yeah, this might be overdoing it a bit.

On Twitter, there are a few ways you can circumvent that. One is to mention it in your profile. Another is to use a Pinned tweet. You can create your own little mini-ad in just 140 characters. Mine says the following:

A Division of Souls, coming 9/3/15!
All formats available at Smashwords!
[Smashwords link, plus embedded cover]

A blipvert of sorts, one you’ll see immediately if you happen to visit my personal Twitter page because it’s pinned up at the top. I’ve only had it up for 3 days, but I’ve already made 156 impressions as of today. That’s not too bad for starters. Nowhere near the thousands of hits some writers get, but hey, it’s pretty good for someone brand spanking new to this gig. And note that I made sure to mention that all formats are available at Smashwords. This will ensure that anyone, regardless of which e-reader they use, can come on over and download it.

You’d probably want to follow suit on other social media channels as well. It’s visible, but it’s not obtrusive, and that’s the balance you want to strive for. I’ve seen others do daily tweet ads, which is fine, because they only do it once a day.

Another Twitter idea, one I just saw someone else use this morning, is kind of a neat twist on the “shop local” idea. There are many brick-and-mortar bookstores out there who work alongside Kobo to sell ebooks at their website, and this writer had come up with a brilliant idea: publicize the book and the local store at the same time! She aimed the tweet at the San Francisco area, mentioned her book was available at this store (complete with link), and made sure to mention the store using their Twitter handle, including the “@”. That last part was genius: you’re not only getting others to check out the store’s twitter feed, you’re getting whoever is manning that store’s feed will see it as well, and may end up retweeting you. I followed suit sometime after, mentioning Books Inc and Green Apple Books, two of my favorite local book shops. I was duly retweeted! Wins all around!

If anything, I’ve heard all kinds of responses to the question of how to self-promote on social media. Some swear by tweetstorms, others by following anyone and everyone who uses the #amwriting hashtag, others still by picking and choosing when and where to insinuate your promotion. Overall, though, the most common response I’ve heard is, go with what works for you. Be creative and have fun with it! But most importantly, remember to keep it balanced!